Cowboy boots made from pirarucu leather fund Amazon’s sustainable fishery

An inhabitant of the Amazon Basin and one of the world’s largest freshwater fishes, the pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) has a hard skin that’s resistant to attacks from aquatic predators such as piranhas, yet is also flexible. Such features, combined with the diamond-shaped design of its scales, have attracted the interest of the global fashion industry.

The largest market for sustainably harvested pirarucu skin is the U.S. state of Texas. Country-style boots made from it are manufactured in the U.S. and in Mexico and sold in both countries, a niche business that helps finance sustainable fishing by traditional communities in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

Meat is the main product of the managed pirarucu fishery, but the skin, which weighs at least 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and used for footwear and other fashion accessories, sells for a higher price, 170-200 reais ($32-$38).

“Selling the skin is crucial to maintaining the 10 reais per kilo of pirarucu [about $1.90/kg, or 86 cents/lb] paid to fishers,” said Ana Alice Britto, commercial coordinator at the Carauari Rural Producers Association, ASPROC. “The skins also help pay a small portion of the logistics, processing and storage costs.”

Founded in 1994, ASPROC is the largest organization in the Middle Juruá River region, representing 800 families from 61 riverside communities. Last year, it sold 180 metric tons of pirarucu.

Commercial exploitation of the colossal fish — which can weigh up to 200 kg (440 lbs) and measure 3 meters (10 feet) long — began in earnest in the 1960s, with the influx of people from across Brazil into the Amazon, coupled with advances in the fishing industry, from more powerful boats, to nylon nets and ice factories, among others.

In 1975, the pirarucu was declared an endangered species, and its capture was banned from 1996 to 1999 in Amazonas state (the fish is also found in the country’s other Amazonian states: Acre, Amapá, Pará, Roraima and Rondônia). Around that time, the Mamirauá Institute for Sustainable Development, a social organization financed and overseen by the federal government, launched the first pirarucu sustainable management plan, which combines conservation and the participation of riverside communities. It would serve as a model for hundreds of other management plans adopted in conservation areas, Indigenous lands and fishing agreement zones over the following decades.

Thanks to the implementation of the management system, pirarucu and other aquatic species have once again begun to repopulate protected areas.

“Fishing management helps recover pirarucu populations, a highly exploited species,” said Cristina Buck, coordinator of sustainable use of fauna and biodiversity at IBAMA, Brazil’s federal environmental agency. “Now, there are more than 1.2 million individuals in Amazonas state, and over 15 million hectares [37 million acres] in management areas recognized by the agency,” she told Mongabay.

The pirarucu management system allows the capture of a maximum of 30% of adult fish (those longer than 1.5 m, or 5 ft) in a particular area. The remaining 70% must stay untouched, allowing the preservation of the populations, which reproduce between December and May.

“The male takes care of the brood, and if it is captured, the young are caught as well. That is why it is necessary to also preserve the adult males,” Buck said.

IBAMA establishes annual fishing quotas for each management plan, depending on the existing number of pirarucus in the area. “For that, a lake is divided into several sections, and each one has its individuals counted by a trained, authorized fisherman,” Joel Araújo, IBAMA’s superintendent in Amazonas, told Mongabay.

Collective effort

In February, IBAMA made the pirarucu program official, whose goal is to improve management practices, in Amazonas — the only state authorized by the agency to manage the species — and expand it to other states, according to Araújo.

“Until now, requests [for management plans] and authorizations are sent back and forth by email, it’s an outdated system,” he said. “The program will be unified and will partner with universities and research organizations.”

Along with the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, IBAMA is preparing a new decree that will restrict pirarucu fishing in the Amazon Basin solely to managed fishing areas.

These community-led pirarucu management systems are an example of an alliance between traditional knowledge and Western science. A case in point: Local fishermen knew that pirarucu come up to the water’s surface to breathe every 20 minutes or so (it has a semiaerobic respiration system), and that’s when they can be counted. In 2004, researcher Leandro Castello scientifically validated this method.

Counting pirarucu is the beginning of a multistep value chain — and of strenuous physical labor. Legal fishermen, generally organized into community associations, often travel great distances to reach the lakes.

“Pirarucu fishing is difficult,” Rônisson de Oliveira, an anthropologist and research fellow at the Mamirauá Institute, told Mongabay. “One needs to travel by motorized canoe for hours and wake up very early because they can only fish during the day, under the intense sun. The fish must be gutted quickly. And when there is no ice to preserve the fish, it has to be transported at night. People return home exhausted.”

When the allowed fishing quota is high, communities must rent a vessel with ice storage or refrigeration, at a cost of 20,000 reais (nearly $3,800) a week. Transporting the catch to a town with industrial refrigeration facilities, or directly to Manaus, the Amazonas state capital, takes four to seven days.

“Without collective organization, pirarucu management is not possible,” Fernanda Alvarenga, co-founder of the Pirarucu Collective and author of a study on the fish leather market, told Mongabay. “A hundred individuals weigh, on average, 6 tons. How is one single person going to fish and transport them? The pirarucu is highly perishable. It is not like Brazil nuts, for example, that have a long shelf life.”

Protecting pirarucu habitat is crucial to its conservation, but even this calls for teamwork. When water levels in the lakes recede, it becomes easier to catch the fish, which attracts illegal fishers. So sustainable fishing communities patrol the lakes day and night.

“Environmental agencies’ supervision is very limited, and there is piracy and drug trafficking in the region,” Pedro Canízio, vice president of the Federation of Pirarucu Managers of Mamirauá (FEMAPAM), told Mongabay. “Illegal fishermen often come armed, but we don’t use weapons. We do this work with courage, but it is not easy. Last August, one of us was shot in the shoulder.”

Not all local fishers are on board with the program, though. In a study on conflicts surrounding pirarucu fishing, anthropologist Oliveira found that a small group in his home community of São Paulo do Coraci reject pirarucu management practices, unlike some 70 other fishermen connected to the local association. Among the reasons given are bureaucracy and religious views.

“They say that the management system has many rules: participating in bimonthly meetings, discussing surveillance processes, not leaving anyone behind in the lakes until everyone is done,” Oliveira said.

Buck, from IBAMA, said she agrees with part of this argument. “It is indeed more bureaucratic, but thanks to it, fish populations have increased [in Amazonas]. Fishermen recall that, years ago, they had to travel longer distances to find piracuru.”

Another difference between the groups is religion. “The management fishermen are Catholic, while the others are Evangelical,” Oliveira said. “The latter believe that God will never let them run out of resources, so they can catch fish whenever they want.”

Guardian of the species lacks support

In addition to threatening the survival of the pirarucu, illegal fishing poses another problem: it drives down its price. “We compete with illegal activity, so we can’t get better prices,” Canízio said.

According to Alvarenga, this region in the upstream basin of the Amazon accounts for about 70% of the state’s managed production of pirarucu. Outside this model, the fish sells for around 4 reais per kilo (75 cents/kg, or 34 cents/lb), while fishers from associations that support collective sales get almost triple. “Managed fish, however, is a small part of the total production,” Alvarenga said.

Earnings depend on the volume sold and the number of fishers involved. On average, each fisher earns 600-4,000 reais ($113-$754) per season.

“It is a small amount, considering they protect the species,” Buck said. “They monitor and care for the lakes year-round and don’t receive anything for it.”

Araújo, from IBAMA, said the pirarucu management system forms part of the “Amazon bioeconomy.”

“The fish is a rainforest resource that is legally and sustainably managed by traditional communities. Society needs to recognize and value this work,” he added.

Brazil’s push for a bioeconomy — a system built on renewable biological resources — has gained attention in recent years. In the Amazon, this means supporting traditional forest-based livelihoods that have existed for generations, rather than replacing them with industrial models. Examples of communities’ alternative sources of income range from sustainable handicrafts made from dead wood, to the balanced harvest of primary products such as açaí berries and cacao pods.

Despite its potential for wealth generation, the sustainable pirarucu fishery has gone largely ignored by local governments. “The region’s politicians show no interest. They don’t realize the magnitude of sustainable fish management,” Araújo said. “They could create state public policies for the activity and for the fishers.”

Inequalities in the value chain

Logistics are one of the hurdles for fishers, especially when it comes to adding value to the trade.

“The ones who earn the most with the skins are the cold storage plants, which buy and receive an already gutted pirarucu,” said Canízio from the fishery managers’ federation. “They just separate the skin from the meat, freeze it, and sell it to tanneries.”

Few associations have floating structures installed at the lakes for immediate fish processing, and fewer own cold storage facilities. “Our communities would like to acquire storage plants so we can sell directly to markets and tanneries, but the cost is high,” Canízio said.

ASPROC, the producers’ association, is finishing the reconstruction of its fish processing industry in Carauari, financed with its own resources and through donations, such as from the JBS Fund for the Amazon (part of Brazilian meatpacking giant JBS) and the Vale Fund (from the namesake mining company). JBS (listed on Wall Street as JBS) is a frequent buyer of cattle from deforested areas in the Amazon and was recently found to be subjecting workers to slavery-like conditions; Vale (VALE) is notorious for the collapse of a dam holding mining waste, an incident that still stands as Brazil’s single worst environmental disaster.

Nova Kaeru, the largest producer of pirarucu leather in Brazil, is located in faraway Rio de Janeiro state. It buys skins primarily from cold storage plants, and the rest from just four community associations in Amazonas.

“The pirarucu sustainable management exists because of the fish meat, not the skin,” André de Castro, Nova Kaeru’s marketing manager, told Mongabay. “Legislation dictates that cooling plants are responsible for receiving and packaging the fish, cutting them into parts, and storing them. In the few cases where NK purchases from fishermen’s associations, they deal directly with their partner plants.”

Rolled up like fabric, the skins are transported in refrigerated trucks to the company headquarters, where they’re processed into leather without the use of chrome and other heavy metals, which are commonly used in conventional leather tanneries.

“We use biodegradable substances, as well as natural oils as tanning agents, and organic aniline for dyeing,” Castro said.

Another Rio-based company is the fashion brand Osklen, which has been a Nova Kaeru customer for 16 years. Unlike international brands like Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana, which have experimented with pirarucu skin only occasionally, Osklen has long featured products in its catalog made from pirarucu. These include a pair of sneakers with cowhide detailing (price: 2,470 reais, or $466), and a shoulder bag (6,750 reais, or $1,273).

“The luxury market has high margins and uses sustainability to sell its products,” said Alvarenga from the Pirarucu Collective. “We say that income distribution is one of Brazil’s biggest problems, and the pirarucu chain is an example of this.”

Osklen didn’t respond to Mongabay’s requests for comment.

Banner image: Cody James brand pirarucu cowboy boots, made from exotic fish leather that stands up to wear, at Boot Barn. Image by Julie Larsen for Mongabay.

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Alexandre de Santi Editor

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